How to Make Your Own Luck

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.” – Coleman Cox, 1922

When it comes to achieving success in business, relationships, our personal health or family life, luck has this amazing ability to show up after all the hard work has been put in.

I am grateful for my work as a life coach. Friends say I am “so lucky to have found this work as a third career.” Lucky, yes, but it didn’t just magically appear. I went about looking for something purposeful and fulfilling as I moved into my senior years. I wanted to build on my education and past work. There were several forks in the road where I had to make hard choices and seriously commit to studying, learning, practicing, failing, and succeeding. The more I learned about coaching, the more I wanted to learn. Now everyday I face choices of time management, priorities, client issues, and finding the space to continue to learn and grow.

What was “lucky” was being open to new ideas and talking with others about what was really important to me. To find coaching, I basically went through the same steps I use with my clients. As my business grew and grew, I felt luckier every day. That luck came from knowing my values and connecting to them full time. It works. But there is no letting up from staying in this good spot. I choose to make the effort to balance being and doing every day. (These are the tools I learned with the “Co-Active” Coaching process, where the “co” refers to being and “active” refers to doing.) What is lucky is that I recognize how I reached this point and I celebrate it. I know others can do it, too.

I believe that “luck” is most likely to show up after we’ve gone far enough and deep enough with our efforts. We’ve aligned ourselves with a particular outcome so it’s practically inevitable. We have summoned it. It is ours. In short, success is not up to fate. It’s something we first define for ourselves, then can create for ourselves. Here’s how:

The Life Coach’s Tips for Making Your Own Luck

Find a new perspective. One of the most important things I do with my life coaching clients is examine the things that most have them “stuck” with a fresh pair of eyes. This often helps us redefine the perceived problem and begin to attack it from a new angle.

Make a choice and commit. To get out of a rut, my life coaching clients need to find a path they freely choose and can commit to for themselves. It’s necessary to make this choice and commitment without the interference of (often well-meaning!) friends, family and others who have a big stake in the outcome. This is why life coaching with a non-invested third party like me is so important. We can really get to the crux of what needs to happen.

Keep coming back to deeply-held values and intention. Throughout the life coaching process, my clients and I always focus on a client’s most deeply-held values and intentions. Even though we all think we know what our “personal values” are, really honing in on them and talking about them freely often yields surprising results!

Take action. Working towards goals or a new state of being together means taking intentional action. These aren’t drastic steps, but careful, intentional, small actions taken consistently and in line with values and goals. After we put together a plan, or how to get there, I help keep my life coaching clients accountable to the actions they’ve committed to. Warning: this can be hard work, but tends to be VERY effective!

Let your results inform future action. It’s always a circular process as we move toward up-leveling someone’s situation through life coaching. What are their actions yielding? Are they in line with the values and intentions we’ve specified in step 3? It takes time to totally change your life, so a good dose of patience and persistence is required, but I won’t string you along. Typically my clients commit to coaching for 3 to 6 months and are able to see results they’re happy with within that time. (See my Testimonials page for stories from my many happy clients, for whom I am immensely grateful.)

Rinse and repeat!

In short, I don’t recommend my life coaching clients wait around for St. Patrick’s Day, or the luck train to show up. Luck is for leprechauns and cereals with marshmallows in them. For the rest of us, hard work, patience, and persistence get us closer to our dreams.

Need Help Making Your Own Luck?

Creating luck and success in your life might seem like a big task, but it’s what I do with my life coaching clients every day! Need an ally in this work? I am accepting a short list of new clients now. Schedule your free initial Life Coaching consultation today. We’ll chart the processes you need to tune into that still, small voice of your values and intuition, and approach change with purpose, patience, persistence and intention. Let’s explore how you can have what you want and live with more ease, freedom, joy and meaningful connection to those around you.

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Hit the Mark, Achieve Your Goals

With experience comes wisdom. Catharine's personal and practical experience has its foundation in over 15 moves and transitions of all sorts, and her collaborative approach has provided comfort, direction and confidence to countless DC area clients.
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catharineectoncoaching@gmail.com

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